TableTalk: A Cookbook and Memoir

For over twenty-five years, the author wrote storis with recipes for magazines and newspapers and, for twelve years, the TableTalk column in the St. LouisJewish Light. TableTalk: A cookbook and Memoir combines my favorites. The book, however, did not begin as memoir. It was to be a cookbook for teh authors grandchildren, which indeed it is. Most of the recipes are for beginning cooks, meant to give them the pleasures of the table from their own kitchens. But as the book began to take shape, and the number of family stories grew, the author realized she was writting both cookbook and memoir. Indeed, memories came tumbling out of her pantry. Food has the power to awaken memories. A whiff of apple pie baking on a cool autumn day takes her back to her mother's kitchen. A taste of Quickles and she is in the summers of her childhood, and with a spoonful of Sunshine Soup, she and Billy are in Kyoto, 1985.